“The distinction between sanity and insanity is narrower than a razor’s edge, sharper than a hound’s tooth, more agile than a mule deer. It is more elusive than the merest phantom. Perhaps it does not even exist; perhaps it is a phantom. ”

“Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally.”

“…we all lie to ourselves; we tell our own selves more lies than we ever do other people.”

“Fear can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy... fear makes you always, always hold something back.”

“Basically, Sherri's idea had to do with bringing Fat's mind down from the cosmic and the abstract to the particular. She had hatched out the practical notion that nothing is more real than a large World War Two Soviet tank.”

“...that thing that's taken refuge there in that zinc bucket, without a wife, a career, a conapt, or money or the possibility of encountering any of these, still persists. For reasons unknown to me its stake in existence is greater than mine.”

“Guilt—if there was any guilt—spread out and diffused itself over everybody and everything…. Perhaps at some point in time, at some spot in the world, a moment of responsibility existed.”